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2015: The Year of Lazy Outrage

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Probably the greatest generation of all time are the millennials. Some people say that the World War 2 generation was the greatest, but that can’t be true because what did they even tweet about?

If the millennials are the greatest generation, then 2015 was surely our greatest year. We faced challenges on every front, challenges that demanded action, and we rose with one voice and shouted our outrage. Not about the actual issues, because those were hard, but we definitely shouted about other stuff.

We sized up the situation, took a deep breath, and bravely struck at the heart of the problem: Confederate flags. With nothing behind us but broad public support, we tweeted bravely for the removal of Confederate flags from society. Finally, after an exhaustive 1 or 2 days, corporations and government offices agreed to purge all traces of the Confederacy.

Yep, that should do it, we said, and then we stopped.

There was still some work to do, probably, or maybe not. Who knows?

Either way, it was okay, because all those black men being held in jail without charges could rest easy knowing that the Dukes of Hazzard was taken off TV Land.

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Flush with success, we cast our all-knowing eyes to the game of football.

In 2015 it had come to our attention that a lot of people who play professional football seem to come down with a horrible disease and die horrible deaths. This would, by definition, sort of implicate us, the people who continue to watch and support football. However, we knew better. The more serious issue was that one of the team names was offensive, and we knew this was the more serious issue because we didn’t have culpability in it.

We vigorously protested the name “Redskins,” lamenting the callous capitalism that produced this grave injustice. It got so bad that we even briefly considered not watching football, but, you know. We took up the cause of Native Americans everywhere, until we remembered that Native Americans sort of lived here first, and anyway we were getting bored with this whole thing, honestly. Besides, we certainly didn’t massacre the Indians; that was the Confederacy, probably.

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Next we had to fight the battle of Starbucks holiday cups. A bunch of Christians got real upset that Starbucks holiday cups didn’t say “Merry Christmas,” or something, so obviously we had to act. We pushed our way into the fray, dropping red-hot think pieces left and right. And sure, we didn’t really have a position, other than to alert everyone that we were too enlightened to get upset about coffee cups. And sure, turns out no one was actually upset about the cups in the first place, but whatever.

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There was no time to rest, because someone had to save Star Wars from the racists. Apparently there was an army of white supremacists who were leading a boycott against The Force Awakens because it did not feature enough white actors.

Once more unto the breach, we whispered, wearily taking out our iPhones. We fought long and hard, with complete disregard for our own thumbs. When other generations would have stopped tweeting, we tweeted on, firing off missive after missive at the unseen hordes of hate. And yeah, turns out the whole thing was a hoax, and there was never an actual boycott, but if it was all for nothing, then why are my thumbs so sore?

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Anyway, we didn’t have time to second-guess ourselves, because someone had to fight for the fat people.

You see, one in three kids is now overweight or obese. This leads to shrinking life expectancy, depression, health problems, skyrocketing health care costs, and other minor issues.

We understood the real danger, though, and the real danger was that an overweight person might feel offended.

We declared war on fat jokes.

We blamed food companies.

We praised and defended every fat model and actor we could find.

Soon we had built so much momentum that we lost all bearings and just started attacking anything that was more attractive than we were.

But we fight for breastfeeding rights, sort of, unless the mom is hot.

All the while, fat people keep dying, the football players keep dying, and black men keep dying, but listen, sometimes you have to pick your battles. After all, that’s how the World War 2 generation defeated the Confederacy, probably.